


The Red Sweater

by itsbeautiful



Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff and Angst, M/M, the red sweater lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 21:46:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6095052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsbeautiful/pseuds/itsbeautiful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the sweater. His thread barren crimson cable knit sweater he had gotten ten years ago, which was currently slung over the tiny figure hiding the closet. The younger man insisted it smelled like him and made him feel safe. Adam looked even smaller when he wore it, sleeves hanging six inches passed his fingertips, hem dragging down his knobby knees. He looked small and scared, and he was wearing that fucking sweater, which meant today was a bad day. He hated those days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Red Sweater

Trudging up the long flights of stairs, Nigel continued to curse under his breath and thought about all the things he wanted to do when he managed to reach their summit. The first was to write management a scrawling note about why a brownstone in a neighborhood as filthy rich as this had yet to install a goddamn elevator. The second was to collapse. He had already decided about one flight ago if he couldn’t find his keys, he was going to just curl up on the welcome mat decorated in constellations outside the front door and pass out until Adam came home from the office. It wouldn’t be the first time he had come home from work and made himself into a human piece of furniture to decorate the hallway. He figured the dark circles under his eyes and battered knuckles healing on his right hand would put off most. If that didn't work, the proverbial sign that read fuck off stamped on his forehead would give people enough pause to even think of trying to approach, let alone wake him. Some of the best sleep he had gotten was in stairwells and on stoops.

Jamming a pack of cigarettes into his back pocket, Nigel tried to ignore the sensation that perhaps being winded had to do with smoking like a house on fire and then dismissed the idea with a curse, “Who the fuck has this many goddamn stairs in an apartment building and no elevator?”

Dragging his sluggish body up by a wooden banister, Nigel reached the apartment door and let his head fall against it with a thud, barely able to think straight from exhaustion buzzing in his brain. He groaned, pain registering sharply against the migraine he already possessed from a night of throwing drunk groping assholes out of the club since one in the morning. His fingers curled around something cold and sharp inside his right jean pocket, a blessed curse falling from his lips. He tugged out a flashing silver key accented with a winking amber Saturn key chain.

Adam had insisted on donning their matching apartment keys with planetary charms to avoid against confusion on who’s key was who’s. He then listed all the reasons why it made sense to do so. What if he accidentally mixed up his key with another key, or worse, lost it—even recollected the conversation was one of the longest Nigel had endured. He had agreed to everything as soon as the boy paused for a breath of air. Who was he to deny Adam fucking Raki anything? Plus a blush had been slowly creeping from cheeks down a slender neck disappearing beneath a sweater and he was more compelled to use their mouths for other things than speaking. He had never been a good conversationalist anyway. He was always wrong, even when he was right and that suited him just fine to see the boy smile. Plus, secretly he thought the little charm was cute as fuck. Not that he would be saying that out loud any time soon.

_So what if I like some cutesy ass stuff. I would wear Hello fucking Kitty t-shirts if I thought it would make that kid happy and I would still beat the shit out of some mouthy fucker who dared to say anything._

Nigel twisted a key in the lock, jamming his shoulder against the door to open it and let it swing shut with a heavy push of his hand. His keys rattled in the swirling obsidian blue ceramic dish beside the door. He toed out of leather dress shoes, heavy eyes drifting closed, gazing at the couch with a dreamy kind of smile. Afternoon sunlight trickled through the cracked shades, spilling across an overstuffed suede surface calling to him in hushed whispers. He was about to fall face first into its inviting embrace when he heard a muffled noise coming from the bedroom. 

Shuffling across the living room, Nigel paused in the doorway and glanced around. The bedroom was empty and quiet except for the nearly inaudible buzz of a black alarm clock on the nightstand stating it was two forty-five. Baby blue cotton sheets were neatly rolled back on the bed and tucked into their proper place at exactly a forty five degree angle. His brows rose ever so slightly on his forehead at the idea of ruining the perfect placement by sleeping there instead. Another hushed sound drew his eyes away from daydreaming about sleeping on the bed. He listened hard and sighed softly when he realized where the sound was coming from. The closet. He quietly crossed the room, placing a hand on the knob and pulled, heart twisting in his chest.

Huddled between a meticulously organized rack of shoes and a corner of the closet wall was Adam, cheeks stained in wet tear tracks and whimpering with eyes screwed shut. He had quickly learned the closet was the younger man’s safe place, instructed matter of factly that it was comfortably small, mostly dark, and blocked out sound from the city and apartment building. Nigel had learned to deal with days revolving around the closet, when all he had to do was step in, close the door, stoop underneath all the clothes on hangers like an oversized giant, and cram himself in beside Adam. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they didn’t. He was good at waiting. A life long skill of staking out men and forcibly collecting their unpaid debts and with some luck breaking a fucking nose or two.

He knew immediately this was not one of those days. It was the sweater. _His_ thread barren crimson cable knit sweater he had gotten ten years ago, which was currently slung over the tiny figure hiding the closet. The younger man insisted it smelled like him and made him feel safe. Adam looked even smaller when he wore it, sleeves hanging six inches passed his fingertips, hem dragging down his knobby knees. He looked small and scared, and he was wearing that fucking sweater, which meant today was a bad day. He hated those days.

“Adam…”

Nigel knelt carefully on the gleaming wooden floor and chased strands of silver hair away from his face with cigarette stained fingertips. He considered asking if the younger man was okay. That is what you did when someone looked upset, right? But of course he wasn’t fucking okay. Nigel was sleep deprived, not blind, and he didn’t want to sound like a complete idiot so soon in the beginning of the conversation they may or may not have.

“Darling…” He lightly touched hands encircling bent knees, covered up in knitted red, and leaned in a little more into the closet. “Would you like to tell me what’s wrong? Did they give you a half day or some shit at work?”

_You’ve never worked a corporate or legitimate job in your life? What the fuck do you know about half days? Do those even exist? Or was it just something you heard in a movie somewhere?_

Starlight eyes swung up, rimmed in red, surprised to see Nigel crouched across from him, furiously batting away a canopy of hanging t-shirts. Adam made a weak little noise and curled tighter, shoving knees against his chest and curling his bare toes under feet. Clenching his jaw, the older man tried to ignore the cherry stem knots twisting in his stomach and resist the instinct to draw the body close to protect. He hated seeing Adam upset on most days but he absolutely loathed seeing his little star in tears. It released unholy demons within his chest that made him want to gouge out eyes and rip out spleens of anyone who so much looked at the boy the wrong way, let alone made him cry. There was no reservation in Nigel’s mind he would kill a man for touching Adam in any way that made him uncomfortable, let alone hurt him. No deity or police force in the world could help that hypothetical miserable fuck then.

A little growl edging out of clenched teeth made Adam look up from staring at the floor and whispered, “They talked about me. They were talking about me and it was all lies. None of it was true!”

“Who, baby…” Nigel grit his teeth, eyes narrowing in calculated concentration, picturing kicking in doors and knocking out teeth. “Who the fuck had the nerve to talk about you?”

“I was just trying to microwave my mac and cheese…” Blue eyes got impossibly wider, springing with a well of tears accompanied by a trembling mouth. “They lied. They lied and I hate it.”

A few months after Nigel moved in, he had learned how to make the younger man’s favorite food. Sure he had burned it a few times, okay about twenty times, and it caught fire once because he got distracted by yelling at the unrealistic depictions of violence in _Boardwalk Empire_ —but he had managed to get it right eventually. Every night since, his routine was the same. Before he left for work and after they had dinner together, Nigel would make mac and cheese and precisely placed a measured half a cup into the small blue Tupperware container. He sloppily scraped out the other in the square one with blistering holes in the top, where he had accidentally melted it after drunkenly hitting thirty three minutes instead of thirty three seconds, before promptly passing out. He would jam that one in a paper bag for his lunch. He would then pull out the grey little insulated lunch bag and set it on the counter. Adam had three--because "just in case"-- but this was his favorite because the inside lining was decorated in planets. First, he tucked in the mac and cheese. Then a paper napkin decorated in smiling stars folded neatly in a triangle. Next came a fork and spoon tucked in its plastic hard case. On the left, he neatly placed a single orange soda can. He had tried to introduce him to Capri Suns once, but it went over poorly. Sometimes when Adam wasn’t looking he would leave a post it note hidden at the bottom just to say he missed him, because Nigel felt like being a sappy fuck and it made him happy. Then he would place it on the right side, top shelf of the fridge, and kiss the younger man goodbye before heading out the door to deal with pounding bass lines and rude customers waving twenties at him from across the bar for cheap beer.

Whoever the fuck wasn’t capable of keeping their mouth shut so his Adam could microwave the goddamn mac and cheese that he made, just the way he liked, every night, because it made his little star smile, was about to get a fist to the goddamn face, a handful of broken teeth, and a textbook thick hospital bill. 

“Adam, you have to use your words, baby,” Nigel coaxed softly, rolling up a sleeve of the sweater and squeezing cold fingers beneath. “Tell me what happened.”

Dark brows furrowed together as Adam hunched in on himself and took a deep breath, words tumbling out in a meteor shower. “They weren’t even talking quietly! They were in the office and I could hear them!”

_Exactly who, with an iota of a brain cell, would carry on a fucking conversation about anyone in a room where the walls were so thin if you stapled a damn piece of paper the entire office building could hear it echo?_

“My boss said I was the reason the production of the new line of toy robots was delayed. They said I was the reason everyone had to work late hours and not see their families and if I wasn’t so _different_ none of this would happen…” The younger man ground out the word different in a clench of fingers, shame rising red in his cheeks.

_And barring that, who in the hell would carry on about his goddamn Adam when said office was connected to break room? What idiot wouldn’t come out to make sure it was actually empty first? Whoever it was deserves to have their head placed between a frame and door while I repeatedly bash some common fucking sense into them._

“They said I was bad at my job! They said I was bad and it isn’t true! It’s not true! They’re liars and I hate them!” Fists lashed out against a head of curls, burrowing tighter against a skull as Adam began to rock back and forth, voice rising to a shout. “Not true, not true, not true, not—“

“Hey!” Nigel growled, fingers latched onto wrists in a fierce grip to keep hands from banging repeatedly into a bent head. “We’ve talked about that! Stop it! Cut it the fuck out, Adam—“

Inhaling a sharp breath, Nigel rushed forward and snared arms around a waist, ignoring tiny feet kicking against his shins, bruising their way up his thighs, before a knee jabbed into his ribcage. He bellowed out a string of curses, planting the younger man firmly on the floor, letting small fists pummel against his chest. Hooking two thumbs beneath the neckline of the red sweater, the older man pulled it up over flashing blue eyes and tear stained cheeks. Knit clung like a halo of galaxies around dark curls depriving Adam of sight. He planted a rough calloused hand against the small of a back, shoving the younger man against his torso and pushed a head against his chest. He wrapped arms firmly around shaking shoulders, placing both his hands over ears to block out all the sound. Adam couldn’t hear anything. He would only be able to feel the warmth of embrace and the steady rhythm of a heart against him.

Nigel held tighter as wailing became piercing, glaring up at the ceiling and trying to recollect how many different ways there was to make a man scream and beg for forgiveness. If he left now, he could be halfway across Manhattan in twenty minutes. Ten if he threw a roll of bills at the cabbie. Seven tops if he threatened to choke the man within in an inch of his life if he didn’t hurry the fuck up and drive. If he packed the staple gun Darko had given them as a joke of a housewarming present, Nigel imagined he could have that dick of a boss tacked down to his fancy oak desk by his primp and proper necktie within a matter of seconds. Maybe everyone would find some goddamn accountability and respect when they listened to the unmistakable high pitched squeals of their overlord begging for mercy as he broke fingers one by one through plaster.

_Manners? Does anyone have them is damn world anymore or what?_

When soft fingers fluttered around hands clamped over ears, Nigel blinked and realized that Adam’s cries had returned to pitiful whimpers. The younger man slumped into him, deflated and worn out, held up by the arms surrounding him. He pressed a firm kiss to a woolen forehead before moving his hands to a narrow waist, thumbs lightly brushing bare skin warmed from exertion.

“I…” Adam pressed his head against a firm chest, trembling voice muffled beneath the sweater. “I…hit him. I didn’t mean to. He swore at me and told me I was a bad person. What do I do? What am I going to do?” A hiccup turned into a choking sob, knees giving way. “He f-f-f-ired me, Ni. I don’t want to move, I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I can’t—“

Curving hands up shuddering shoulder blades, Nigel lifted the hem of the sweater up a torso and slipped beneath it to join Adam inside its warm dark confines. He pressed his cool forehead to a damp one, splaying fingers around the back of a neck and a head to keep close. He felt ragged breath fluttering against his cheek, tears rolling from eyes and lingering salty on his mouth. He blindly chased after one and pressed his mouth against it, nuzzling closer, a fluttering bird stirring inside his heart. He was pretty sure he had loved Adam from the first time they met. He just hadn’t found the balls to say it out loud yet.

“You…you’ll stretch out the sweater…” He felt a small nose wrinkle in distaste. “You won’t like it then. It will be stretched and baggy and won’t fit. And you won't like it.”

A small snort answered. “It’s my goddamn sweater, Adam Raki, I will stretch it out if I feel like it.”

“But—“ A body squirmed against him, small fists scrunching up his black t-shirt.

“Baby, I will buy a hundred more sweaters just like this if it will make you feel better about ruining this old, shitty one…” Nigel brushed his lips lightly over the ones below, gaze drifting up to where he know wide eyes would be looking back. “You like when I wrap you up the sweater until you feel better, right?”

“Yes…”

“Then I’ll stay here with you until you do. And then I’ll feel better. Is that alright?”

“O-okay…” A tiny voice sniffled, shivering closer until arms enclosed.

“You are my fucking star, Adam,” Nigel breathed out fiercely, holding closer. “And not a goddamn person in the world gets to treat you like that. Especially not that old cock! If I ever see him again, I am going to shove Dial soap into his mouth and he is going to learn the very definition of harassment. You hear me? They’re worthless! All of them! Those pieces of shit are jealous because you have a genius brain and you are the most beautiful damn thing on the planet, and they don’t appreciate you.”

Teeth chattered in a pitiful whine. “I like my job! I don’t want to—“

“Companies will be ripping out each other’s throats just to hire you, little star!”

“Technically—“

“Not technically, anything!” The older man growled, narrowing his eyes furiously even though he knew the boy couldn’t see it. “You hated working there! Your coworkers are shit and toxic, and you have been miserable for months. You don’t _like_ your job, baby, you tolerate its existence because it pays the bills like most people do.”

“The bills…” Shoulders curled into him as Adam whimpered, “How will I pay the mortgage, Nigel? How will I…pay for anything? What will I do? What if I can’t find a job? I am not good at interviews. They’ll hate me. They’ll say I’m different…”

Nigel inched closer, crooking an arm around a quivering ribcage, and said softly, “Adam, darling, you are different…”

A tiny cry answered.

“Being different is _not_ a bad thing, so stop saying it like that. You are the most brilliant fucking person I have ever met. I mean… I don’t always know what you are prattling on about half the time because…I just don’t, but when I look at you, I know it makes you happy. What do _I_ think you should do?” The older man pressed words into a temple, moving his mouth down the side of a brow and a cheek. “You wanna become a real live mother fucking spaceman and go to the moon? Then you do that. You wanna move across the country to study the planets, stars, and all that shit then we will go. And if you feel like you are tired and you want to read an astronomy novel the size of a damn history textbook every day of the week instead of working for the rest of your life then that’s okay too.”

Stroking fingers through silky curls sticking out from the red neckline, Nigel leaned forward through the dark of the sweater till he could make out tiny pin pricks of light from Adam’s eyes, his voice dipping low and rough. “You aren’t alone anymore, Adam. So…let me worry about the unnecessary bullshit like bills, mortgages, and money for a little bit, alright? Let me… let _me_ take care of _you_. I’ll take care of all of it. Just be my exceptionally different and happy little star for a change. Fuck those assholes and shine bright, darling. You’re so beautiful when you shine.”

Letting out a small whimper, Adam rolled up on tiptoes and threw arms around a wide neck before planting his lips firmly on harsh lips breathing out a surprised curse. Nigel flattened his palm in between arcing shoulder blades and burrowed his fingers in silken curls, crushing them as oxygen was drawn out of his lungs and into the hot open mouth welded against his. His eyes slipped closed, a wave of dizziness crawling through his veins as the kiss deepened. He figured there were a lot worse ways of blacking out and none of them tasted like starlight beneath drifting clouds.

“T-t-t-thank you,” Adam warbled softly, rubbing his cheek affectionately against stubble.

“For what?” He croaked, gasping for breath and blinking away red dots.

Blinding light hit his eyes as the sweater lifted, snapping them shut instinctively with a loud swear as a chuckle was muffled by a hand. “You are supposed to close your eyes first, Ni! Otherwise your eyes won’t adjust in time.”

“Well…” Nigel growled, creaking his eyes open to slits and half glaring at pink cheeks. “That only works if someone gives you a little bit of a fucking warning now, doesn’t it?”

Pink cheeks blossomed to a field of crimson wild tulips, white teeth nipping out to suck in a bottom lip. “Would you…would you really do all those things for me, Nigel?”

The older man blinked once before, dragging Adam forward by the sweater and caged him back in his arms, growling into curls, “I’ll give you the fucking moon, baby, if that’s what you want. Remember?”

“That is _still_ metaphysically impossible…” Dark lashes swept up, constellations filling a wide gaze. “But…I like when you say it, Ni. I like how you look at me when you say it…”

“ _We_ will figure it out, Adam. You are everything to me. I’ll take care of you. I just… I want you to be happy…” Nigel whispered, ducking his head as heat flushed his face red. “…with me.”  

A happy chirp answered. “His nose bled a lot.”

Nigel glanced up to find Adam grinning from ear to ear, pride swelling in his chest as he swept the younger man off his feet in a big bear hug, shouting, “My sweet, innocent little star broke some guy’s goddamn nose! You’re perfect, you know that, Adam Raki? Just fucking gorgeous.” 

“N-n-nigel, I’m getting dizzy!” The younger man tottered unsteadily on his feet when he was set down as larger hands cupped his shoulders to keep him upright, blinking to regain focus. “Will you…will you pick up my lunch box? I…” Blue eyes stared at a right foot crossed over a left, toes curled with embarrassment. “I left it and they won’t let me back in the building. They said I wasn’t allowed. And it’s my favorite.”

This time it was Nigel’s turn to grin, a flash of all teeth and up turned corners of a wolfish mouth. He thought about the staple gun stashed in the dilapidated cardboard box in the closet labeled, “Nigel’s Stuff.” Adam had insisted on crossing out the word shit and replacing it with something more appropriate. Sure, maybe he couldn’t break any bones without getting arrested, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try out his new found hobby of home improvement. Starting with an old man, a tie, and a desk.

“Anything for you, darling. Anything at all.”

**Author's Note:**

> A quick ficlet for Spacedogs Appreciate Work to go with the illustration I made! Because I can't help my love for Hannigram and that damn sweater <3 Which you can see below: 
> 
> http://hallofmybeginnings.tumblr.com/post/139874970774/as-promised-3-a-quick-ficlet-to-go-with-the


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